Disclaimer: I don't own Soul Eater.

Please read this before starting the story:

As promised, I let people vote for this story and this won. But, this note is here for a different reason. I've decided to dedicate this story to a teacher from my school. He's a wonderful, fun, and great person, who teaches French. Everyone loves him, including me, even though I never truly got to know him well. Now, he is suffering from a horrible nervous system disease called ALS, which stole his ability to use both his legs. He came to school in a wheelchair, reassuring his students that he was fine for the time being, but he'd have to stop teaching. But what he didn't tell us is that people diagnosed with ALS only have about 3 to 5 years to live, until the disease wreaks havoc in the body and finally causes the respiratory system to fail. I'm dedicating this story to him because I want everyone to know that I support him even until he takes his last breath, and my only regret is that I didn't get to know him better.

So, with that said, this story is dedicated to the dear Mr. Coleman, who still smiles despite his situation and always put his best into teaching his valuable students. Thank you for being such a wonderful teacher, my prayers and hopes go out to you.

When he was a child, he had gotten so accustomed to the constant pain that he no longer was able to feel any. A blow to his stomach was numb. A kick to his ribcage did nothing to faze him. A small tumble and a skinned knee wasn't worth crying about. So when Maka had struck him across the cheek, tears streaking down her face, he had felt absolutely nothing except for the slightest pang of guilt in the pit of his stomach. Then, she dashed down the hall as fast as she could and ran out of sight. And he was left there, feeling the place where the palm of her hand had connected with his face, running his fingers where pain was supposed to be but was somehow absent. Maybe he didn't think about it hard enough, and that's why he didn't sense it.

He didn't blame her for being angry at him; he, after all, was the true jerk. She was only trying to help. It was one of their infamous simple arguments, but this time just happened to be different. They had been standing in the middle to the hallway just after dismissal, running their usual conversation. Their usual exchange would be quite simple, usually concluding with her chastising him about his lacking work ethics and how he was way to lazy and how he wouldn't know anything if he didn't try to learn. But he felt different today, like something small that had been nagging at him was now thrashing in its cage, like an animal trying desperately to escape its prison, except his only animals were his own emotions. He couldn't take it this time. So he snapped, his words unintentionally slipping off his tongue, the wrong kind of words. The kind of words that were too insulting to even utter under your breath.

She stood there in shock at first, and then her eyes welled up with tears. That's when the guilt started. Then she whacked him, and she didn't hold back, and he didn't try to stop it; he knew he deserved it. He watched as she darted around the corner farther away from him, and forced his legs to move after her.

He knew where she'd gone - upstairs to the roof, her favorite place to stay when things were troubled. It's only been four weeks since they met, but he knew her pretty well.

He continued to wander at his slow pace and follow the trail of her sorrow. But he wanted to run after her, to tell her that he was sincerely sorry even though those words had not come out of his mouth for years. He knew that forcing his will on hers would only make it worse than it already was. He trudged up the stairs quietly, with a heavy heart, and stopped at the very top, where the door to the roof was slightly ajar. Leaning his ear close to the crack, he could hear her all the way at the edge - her usual place to sit - choking out small little sobs and attempting to stop them after each hiccup. It was cold outside; Soul could tell just by listening to the winter breeze sail by.

He knew from experience that a broken heart could not be mended very easily and was a thousand times more hurtful than a strike to the face, but tread carefully out towards her anyways. She was cradling her knees to her chest, sitting on the concrete side dangerously close to the edge. Panic arose. He wanted to tell her that she might fall to her death. And that he would never be able to stand the loss of his only friend. He wanted apologize to her over and over again just to say that he cared about her. But he knew that it was never that simple.

Her body tensed up at the feeling of his presence standing behind her. She sniffled and rubbed the tears out of her eyes before turning around to face him angrily. "Just go away, Soul. Leave me alone." Her eyes and nose were red and puffy from not only crying, but the freezing gust that hit her exposed skin like shards of ice.

"I...I hope you're not planning of actually jumping," he said slowly. His own nonchalance only made him angrier.

She jerked back around and went back to hugging her knees.

"That's not...what I meant." Soul's voice lowered into a low grumble. "I came here to...apologize."

"Huh?" She asked.

"I'm sorry," he murmured.

"What?"

"I'm sorry." he finally choked out. "I was kind of a jerk back there."

Maka turned once more and quirked her eyebrow at him. "'Kind of?'"

"Okay, fine. I was a grade-A jackass. So I'm sorry." He reached into his bag and pulled out the tiny box he had been saving. "Apology tissue box?" He asked, holding it out to her.

She glanced at the box, then at him, then back at the box. "Accepted," she said sullenly, taking some tissues from it and dabbing her eyes.

"I'm sorry," he repeated again, just to make sure.

"You better be."

"Don't rub it in."

She paused in the surrounding frozen air. "Though...I hope I didn't hit you to hard..."

"Nah," he shrugged, taking a seat next to her and dangling his legs off the side of the building. "I've received harder slaps in my past than that one." Soul felt a shiver crawl up his spine and he hugged his jacket tighter. Maka still refused to look him in the eyes.

"If I had just known what you went through...I never would've laid a finger on you..." she said sadly, her face still flushed red from the blistering cold.

"I already said it's fine. Now...maybe we should take this conversation inside before one of us slips and falls off this 50-foot building," he deadpanned.

"Oh. You're right." Maka scooted backwards away from the edge and got up, patting her skirt down. Soul could see that her legs, as well as her nose and cheeks, were deep red from suffering in the cold.

"Let's hurry. You might get sick from all this." They rushed inside together and quickly shut the door. As soon as they got inside, Soul noticed that she was still shivering, and took off his own jacket.

"What are you doing?" She asked as he wrapped it around her shoulders tenderly.

"You don't want to get sick, don't you?"

It had been a simple assignment, forced on them by their eccentric science teacher; find some sort of topic to research, then somehow make a project out of it; an impossible task assigned to an unsuspecting boy and girl. They had never even noticed each other before - Maka Albarn, perky and innocently naive new girl in town, plucked from her usual cityscape, and mysterious and sullen boy Soul Eater, who was notorious in his small town as the one who would never talk to anyone nor look at them, who never bothered to attend school activities and would instead sulk back to his house, who was rumored as spawn of the devil since he had glaring red eyes and pointed teeth that were probably used to hunt down and devour small animals during his nightly hunt, and who hid his face under the shadow of his black hoodie.

She had to be the lucky one, being paired up with him at random. Everyone thought so. They wouldn't dare go within a 10-feet radius of him, and suspected that she wasn't too willing to do so either. Her soul would make a nice snack to keep him satisfied, they teased. Not that they knew that he was completely human, and that he didn't believe that people had souls anyways and he knew this as a fact, especially after what he had experienced at the orphanage...

Sometimes, he didn't know what hell he was doing. Like when he promised he'd despise the girl who was assigned the same project with him, but ended up giving her his jacket. It was an accident, he swore. He even ended up convincing her that a walk home would be too long and she was already starting to show symptoms of a fever, so she had to stop for a break at his house and he'd drive her home.

Unlike most, he suspected that she was different from them all. She didn't hesitate to answer or hold back in their conversations, even when he only replied with distant one-worded answers. She would smile when he made a slight mistake and helped him fixed it. Even offered some her of lunch to him when he had forgotten to make his own. She seemed completely concerned when he told her that he was from an orphanage, and that he was living in a small house down the block that was being payed for by his adopted mother. "Why are you living alone?" She had asked during the first week they met.

"My mother thinks it's better if I went to school here, but she couldn't afford to leave her family in the last town," he stated. "She thinks it's a better environment here. So every month or so she has to gather up money and then sends it to me."

She nodded slowly and understandingly. "Is it boring here? Living in a small town like this, where everybody knows everybody and there's nothing that changes?"

"There's nothing much to this small town," he admitted. "It gets boring way to often around here. No one ever changes. They'll always be assholes."

"What about you?" She asked carefully. "Would you ever change?"

"Like hell I would," he snorted and dug his hands deeper into his pockets. "I'd rather shoot myself in the ass than become one of them."

She laughed. It was the first time he'd made anyone laugh.

Soul dunked the teabag around in the cup of steaming hot water until it turned into an amber liquid. He set the cup carefully on the tray and balanced it while he walked out of his kitchen and to the living room where Maka was sitting on the couch, glancing around observantly at his small abode. "You live here?" Her voice was numbed down thanks to her stuffy nose. "It's nice."

"Thanks," he set the coffee mug down with her tea in it and took his own. "You can rest here until you wanna go home. I'll drive."

"Thank you," she graciously accepted her scalding hot tea and blew at the steam at the top of the cup away, whiffing the gentle smell of jasmine. She slipped out a tissue paper from her pocket and blew her bright red nose as Soul took a slow sip from his cup, then sighed with content.

He didn't bother to mention that their project was due in two days. They hadn't even started, too busy being conflicted on what topic it would be about. Besides, Maka wasn't too interested in completing it; she was concentrated more on adjusting to her new life with her Papa. Ever since the divorce and he gained custody over his daughter, he decided that it would be nice to inhale the fresh scent of small town air, clean and pure unlike the clogged up stuffy atmosphere of her concrete jungle filled with countless cars and towering buildings.

It was nothing like she expected, walking into her new house for the first time. "Ah, would you look at that, Maka?" Her father wandered around their new living room and looked around. "Isn't it nice?" She remembered how a gray haze covered the town that day, clouds stuffing up the sky so no sunlight could penetrate its blockade. The rain poured down with a vengeance. The wind pounded on their windshield. "Why don't we settle in and check this place out?"

When Maka had found her room, the last family's bedroom, and set her luggages down she went out for a short car ride. There wasn't much to see, after all. A small drug store, grocery store, and a library, a post office, and streets with a few houses here and there. Very quiet. "Papa, can I go out on my own and explore for a little while?" she asked and he agreed, only if she went home in time for dinner.

While her new environment was covered in a gloomy blanket of rain and wind, she braved through it with her rain boots and jacket. She passed darkened windows of stores that had been closed up for the night. The streets were cleared of people, empty and desolate. Or at least she thought so. She continued on with her journey, but suddenly stopped. Squinting, her eyes focused through the rain at a dark figure that seemed to be looming towards her. It came closer, and she saw that it was a person wearing a deep black jacket and blue jeans. He slouched, his face hidden from view by the hood and his hands were stuffed in his pockets at his sides. Maka froze. He walked down the street, this mysterious young man, and didn't bother to look up, as if he knew already of her presence. When his shadow edged closer to hers, he stopped. Maka prepared to defend herself.

But then, she heard him chuckled. "New girl, huh?" His voice rumbled, and he peeked up slightly as two crimson droopy eyes gazed at her. She drew back, slightly panicked.

"Um...hello..." her unsteady words escaped her mouth. "Do you know where there's a good place to eat here?" His back straightened and the bottom of his face could be seen under the shadow of his hood. Silently, he turned and pointed across the street to a small shop whose bright neon lights illuminated its patch of street. "Th-thanks," she said, managing a smile. The boy didn't seem to stir, and sunk back down again and continued on. She wondered, why wouldn't he look her in the eyes?

Maka decided to follow his strange instructions. That night, they both had take-out for dinner.